Two of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains said that they had fixed the technical problems that affected online grocer ordering as well some in-store payments.
Sainsbury’s and Tesco suffered IT (information technology) troubles on the same day yesterday (Saturday 16 March) – and the fast food chain McDonald’s had problems on Friday.
Customers were unable to make contactless payments at Sainsbury’s stores after an overnight software update and the chain was unable to fulfil the “vast majority” of online deliveries.
Tesco also had to cancel some online orders that were due for delivery.
Both companies apologised to customers and later said that the unrelated issues were resolved.
Sainsbury’s had said that it could not deliver most online grocery orders and was unable to contact customers directly.
The company later said: “We can confirm that contactless payments are now back up and running in all stores, alongside all other forms of payment.
“Our Groceries Online ordering system is working as normal and customers can place an order for delivery any time from tomorrow.
“We apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused by technical issues today – thank you for bearing with us.”
Argos, which is owned by Sainsbury’s, was also affected by the software update, meaning that some customers may have had issues ordering new items or collecting orders in-store.
It said that there may have been delays in fulfilling orders placed.
Only a small proportion of Tesco orders due for delivery yesterday were affected, it is understood.
Tesco customers received an email if their order was disrupted – and if it was cancelled they were not charged.
In-store shopping and placing orders on the app and website were not believed to have been affected.
Tesco said: “The vast majority of our online orders are being delivered as normal but due to a technical issue earlier today we have had to cancel a small number of orders.
“We are contacting affected customers directly and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience.”
McDonald’s has apologised to customers after they were unable to order food after an IT system outage affected its restaurants on Friday.
The fast food operator said that the problem had now been “resolved” at its British branches.
On Friday morning, customers in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan complained about problems when trying to buy food and drink from the fast food firm on social media.
A number of British customers said on social media that their local restaurants were closed although they were able to place orders through the company’s app.
Most stores across the country opened as usual on Friday morning despite the problem.
The company blamed the issue on a “technology outage” but said that it was not linked to any cybersecurity issues.
McDonald’s said: “We are aware of a technology outage which impacted our restaurants. The issue has now been resolved in the UK and Ireland.
“We thank customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.
“The issue is not related to a cybersecurity event.”
Get used to it , i blame the cashless society. If we ever went to War the first thing that would be knocked out is the internet them everything will grind to a holt.
Fun fact; there is more debt in the world then money to pay for it. Money works, only because we believe it to have value.
Yes fiat currencies have a very notional value.
Nine meals away from anarchy ! the bad actors know it, but still we march towards being cashless.
When I walked past the Sainbury’s on Wetern Rd yesterday afternoon there was a large sign saying it was only contactless that wasn’t working but chip and pin was. Cash was also accepted!
Hardly the end of the universe.
Greggs today – let’s join the dots eh ?
Quite a long time ago now, but when Asda or someone like that had a similar problem they just whipped out one of those old-fashioned card machines and resorted to the paper and carbon copies method for the amount of time the systems were down. Job done. Relying on tech and IT ‘professionals’ in this day and age is all very well but there seems to be no effective back-up strategy. At least one of the big players (a very well-known supermarket which is mentioned in the article) has a truly abominable website with a rubbish search function and it often falls over, albeit very temporarily on most occasions. Corners are obviously being cut in the never-ending quest for financial savings, but this is a very stupid area for cuts in a world which apparently can barely function at all without IT. If we have to have an IT-only world, then big players should at least employ competent professionals, which this particular supermarket obviously doesn’t. And they obviously don’t do rigorous and robust behind-the scenes testing of a software update before allowing it to go live – standard procedure in anything important and it needn’t cost an arm and several legs and doesn’t need a massive team either. You just need to find the right people and pay them properly to retain them. If this lot do test updates behind the scenes before going live, then they’re clearly even more incompetent than they already appear.
You could understand all of this in a little orner-shop grocery enterprise, but not in big nationwide businesses.